Star Trek legend Marina Sirtis revealed what it's like to spend an evening as Prince Charles' 'official escort'

Marina Sirtis, who played Counselor Deanna Troi in Star Trek, has opened up about her experience with Prince Charles when he requested her to accompany him to the premiere of Star Trek: First Contact.

• Prince Charles escorted Marina Sirtis to the Star Trek: First Contact premiere nearly 25 years ago in 1996.
• The Star Trek legend has recently opened up about this premiere and how ‘lovely' the Prince was to spend time with. 
• In other royal news, The Queen returns to an iconic television set 40 years after her first visit there.

In 1996, Prince Charles asked Star Trek star, Marina Sirtis, to accompany him to the premiere of her film Star Trek: First Contact. Marina spoke to Express.co.uk about this experience and reminisced about how she never envisioned accompanying a Prince to a premiere even in her “wildest dreams”.

Marina said, “I was actually Prince Charles' official escort for the premiere of [Star Trek: The Next Generation's] movie First Contact. I got a call from Paramount and they said, 'We've just got a call from Buck House and Prince Charles wants you to be his official escort'."

She had assumed that someone had made a mistake and the Prince was actually looking for Patrick Stewart (who played Jean Luc Picard in the series).

Marina continued, "It was the Prince's Trust, and I said, 'You've called Marina, did you mean to call Patrick?'" 

To her delight, they corrected her, confirming that they did indeed mean to call her, and Prince Charles had requested Marina personally as his official escort for the evening.

"I had never been so nervous in my life. I'm from Tottenham, for God's sake," said Marina. "Never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be sat next to Prince Charles at a premiere of a movie I was in. And he was lovely."

Marina explained that she didn’t think that Prince Charles was necessarily a fan of the series, mentioning, "I don't think he is a Star Trek fan because at one point he was like, 'What's going on?' I don't think he really knew.”

She then divulged that the Prince displayed impeccable cinema etiquette, as he didn’t chat throughout the film. She said, “He was very nice, and he chatted, but he didn't talk during the movie."

Marina was married to Michael Lamper when she accompanied Prince Charles to the premiere. 

The Duke of Cornwall, on the other hand, had only just finalized his divorce from Princess Diana. The film premiered on 13 December 1996 and the couple's divorce proceedings were completed a few months earlier in August.

Marina spoke about how her husband helped her at the premiere. She said, "In the limo on the way to the cinema, my husband [Michael Lamper] kept having to remind me to breathe—because I literally would stop breathing.”

She explained that her inability to breathe was because she was such a big fan of Prince Charles.

"I've never been so nervous in my life. I was terrified. Because I love the Royal Family. I'm a big royalist. This was huge for me," she said.